YOU, TOO, CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

(May 7/ New York) Do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do. But some people need to make more money, just to have the basic things you and I take for granted, like clean drinking water, soap, cashew water duck, and gravy yachts. Did you know that in some American cities—and in cities in third world countries like Canada—a professional soccer player on an MLS team's developmental roster can make as little as $20,100 a year!?! Did you know the starting price for a bottle of Cristal is over $200... American? Other items necessary to maintaining the professional athlete's standard of living, like custom bling that spells your name out in diamonds or a retinue of hot bitches large enough to guarantee that at least some of them really are bitches (Ronaldo!) can cost even more.

For as little as $4 a day—that's less than the cost of a ticket to a Kansas City Wizards playoff game—you can sponsor one of Major League Soccer's Developmental Players, and save him from a life of poverty and the indignity that comes with coaching AYSO teams on weekends to make ends meet, or of splitting a studio apartment and a pair of bunkbeds with a teammate. No pro athlete should ever have to resort to hanging a tie on the door! [Sleeping in bunkbeds ought to be guarantee enough against that. –eds.]

Without access to potable water, development players often resort to drinking Aquafina or, in extreme cases, Sierra Mist. "After every all star game, cases of Sierra Mist are lying around. Developmental players, naïve enough to have signed a developmental contract in the first place, are enticed by Sierra Mist's brightly colored packaging and the highly-developed ecosystem contained within each bottle. In its own way, remaindered Sierra Mist is almost as grave a cause for concern as the similar problem we encounter with landmines and clusterbombs. [While the phrases 'blow chunks' and 'blown to chunks' are deceptively similar, their referents are indeed quite different. –eds.]

Your developmental player is guaranteed to be cuddly-but-malnourished, loving and eager to please, able to sit still for 90 minutes or longer when asked to, or to run or jog for even longer. He shows good hustle, but will never hustle you. Despite living in his parents' basement, your developmental player is guaranteed to notplay Dungeons & Dragons. Odds are, he doesn't play any games.

With your geneoristy, you can make a difference. To a Developmental Player, your generosity might make all the difference.

Sincerely yours,

Sally Struthers

Player Reactions:

Raphael Cox (RSL, $34,008/yr)

"Yeah, we really do need the hot bitches. I mean the hot bitches. MLB players like, well, Derek Jeter banged Mariah Carey, for fuck's sake! The closest an MLS player has ever come to that was marrying an emaciated third-rate eurotrash skank from a girl group named after a PPV porno channel. Except for Jimmy Conrad, of course, who's slept with Christina Applegate, Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Sophia Loren (when she was young), Sharon Stone (before that whole "karma" fuck up, by which I mean the production and release of Basic Instinct 2) and Phil Donahue, to name but a few.

"Also, I could really use another eight bucks. Spare a droogie some cutter?"

Emmanuel Gomez (TFC, $20,100/yr)

"With the base salary for developmental players set in useless American dollars, every day is a struggle to survive. We have to move Thanksgiving up almost two months just to be able to save up enough money for Christmas, eh? Given all that, developmental players at TFC are forced to make inhumane substitions of inferior and often generic products just to get by. I mean, we drink Shasta Cola instead of Mecca Cola, drink Molson instead of beer, put curds and gravy on fries instead of ketchup, and use Herbalife instead of receiving quality healthcare. No, wait, healthcare's covered here. Ha ha! Up yours, septic tanks!"

Alec Dufty (NYRB, $20,100/yr)

I supplement my income at truck stops doing impersonations of my team's starters playing a real game. Or any game, really. My god, do they suck.

Ryan Miller (DC, $20,100/yr)

"This is a worthy cause, but there's probably worthier ones, like Grillz for England Fanz. My paycheck makes me wanna cry, but their teeth make me wanna hurl. No, man, vomit. How'd you get 'try my luck in Ireland' from 'hurling'?"

George John (FC Dallas, $34,008/yr)

"My annual salary's more than this ***** team's worth."

Cuauhtemoc Blanco (Designated Player, Chicago, $2,943,702/yr guaranteed)

[We asked him if he was happy with himself. We assume he nodded. Hard to tell. –eds.]